Patent Application

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Patent protection is territorial right and therefore it is effective only within the territory of India. However, filing an application in India enables the applicant to file a corresponding application for same invention in convention countries, within or before expiry of twelve months from the filing date in India. Therefore, separate patents should be obtained in each country where the applicant requires protection of his invention in those countries. There is no patent valid worldwide.

It is possible to file an international application known as PCT application in India in the Patent Offices located at Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi. All these offices act as Receiving Office (RO) for International application.

An invention relating either to a product or process that is new, involving inventive step and capable of industrial application can be patented. However, it must not fall into the categories of inventions that are non- patentable under section 3 and 4 of the Act.

A patent application can be filed either by true and first inventor or his assignee, either alone or jointly with any other person. However, legal representative of any deceased person can also make an application for patent.

An invention that is frivolous or that claims anything obviously contrary to well-established natural laws;
An invention the primary or intended use of which would be contrary to law or morality or injurious to public health;
The mere discovery of a scientific principle or the formulation of an abstract theory;
The mere discovery of any new property or new use for a known substance or of the mere use of a known process, machine or apparatus unless such known process results in a new product or employs at least one new reactant;
A substance obtained by a mere admixture resulting only in the aggregation of the properties of the components thereof or a process for producing such substance;
The mere arrangement or rearrangement or duplication of known devices, each functioning independently of one another in a known way;
A method or process of testing applicable during the process of manufacture for rendering the machine, apparatus or other equipment more efficient, or for the improvement or restoration of the existing machine, apparatus or other equipment, or for the improvement or control of manufacture;
A method of agriculture or horticulture;
Inventions relating to atomic energy.

A patent owner has the right to decide who may – or may not – use the patented invention for the period in which the invention is protected. In other words, patent protection means that the invention cannot be commercially made, used, distributed, imported, or sold by others without the patent owner's consent.

Patents may be granted for inventions in any field of technology, from an everyday kitchen utensil to a nanotechnology chip. An invention can be a product – such as a chemical compound, or a process, for example – or a process for producing a specific chemical compound. Many products in fact contain a number of inventions. For example, a laptop computer can involve hundreds of inventions, working together.

Patent protection is granted for a limited period, generally 20 years from the filing date of the application.

Patent rights are usually enforced in a court on the initiative of the right owner. In most systems a court of law has the authority to stop patent infringement. However the main responsibility for monitoring, identifying, and taking action against infringers of a patent lies with the patent owner.

Licensing a patent simply means that the patent owner grants permission to another individual/organization to make, use, sell etc. his/her patented invention. This takes place according to agreed terms and conditions (for example, defining the amount and type of payment to be made by the licensee to the licensor), for a defined purpose, in a defined territory, and for an agreed period of time.
A patent owner may grant a license to a third party for many reasons. The patent owner may not have the necessary manufacturing facilities, for example, and therefore opts to allow others to make and sell his/her patented invention in return for “royalty” payments. Alternatively, a patent owner may have manufacturing facilities, but they may not be large enough to cover market demand. In this case, he/she may be interested in licensing the patent to another manufacturer in order to benefit from another income stream. Another possible situation is one in which the patent owner wishes to concentrate on one geographic market; therefore the patent owner may choose to grant a license to another individual/organization, with interests in other geographical markets. Entering into a licensing agreement can help to build a mutually-beneficial business relationship.
Unlike selling or transferring a patent to another party, the licensor continue to have property rights over the patented invention.

Patented inventions have, in fact, pervaded every aspect of human life, from electric lighting (patents held by Edison and Swan) and plastic (patents held by Baekeland), to ballpoint pens (patents held by Biro), and microprocessors (patents held by Intel, for example).
Patents provide incentives to and protection for individuals by offering them recognition for their creativity and the possibility of material reward for their inventions. At the same time, the obligatory publication of patents and patent applications facilitates the mutually-beneficial spread of new knowledge and accelerates innovation activities by, for example, avoiding the necessity to “re-invent the wheel”.
Once knowledge is publicly available, by its nature, it can be used simultaneously by an unlimited number of persons. While this is, without doubt, perfectly acceptable for public information, it causes a dilemma for the commercialization of technical knowledge. In the absence of protection of such knowledge, “free-riders” could easily use technical knowledge embedded in inventions without any recognition of the creativity of the inventor or contribution to the investments made by the inventor. As a consequence, inventors would naturally be discouraged to bring new inventions to the market, and tend to keep their commercially valuable inventions secret. A patent system intends to correct such under-provision of innovative activities by providing innovators with limited exclusive rights, thereby giving the innovators the possibility to receive appropriate returns on their innovative activities.
In a wider sense, the public disclosure of the technical knowledge in the patent, and the exclusive right granted by the patent, provide incentives for competitors to search for alternative solutions and to “invent around” the first invention. These incentives and the dissemination of knowledge about new inventions encourage further innovation, which assures that the quality of human life and the well-being of society is continuously enhanced.

There are numerous conditions that must be met in order to obtain a patent and it is not possible to compile an exhaustive, universally applicable list. However, some of the key conditions include the following:

The invention must show an element of novelty; that is, some new characteristic which is not known in the body of existing knowledge in its technical field. This body of existing knowledge is called “prior art”
The invention must involve an “inventive step” or “non-obvious”, which means that it could not be obviously deduced by a person having ordinary skill in the relevant technical field
The invention must be capable of industrial application, meaning that it must be capable of being used for an industrial or business purpose beyond a mere theoretical phenomenon, or be useful
Its subject matter must be accepted as “patentable” under law. In many countries, scientific theories, aesthetic creations, mathematical methods, plant or animal varieties, discoveries of natural substances, commercial methods, methods for medical treatment (as opposed to medical products) or computer programs are generally not patentable
The invention must be disclosed in an application in a manner sufficiently clear and complete to enable it to be replicated by a person with an ordinary level of skill in the relevant technical field

There are numerous conditions that must be met in order to obtain a patent and it is not possible to compile an exhaustive, universally applicable list. However, some of the key conditions include the following:
1.African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI)
2.African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO)
3.Eurasian Patent Organization (EAPO)
4.European Patent Office (EPO)
5.Patent Office of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC Patent Office)

Under such regional systems, an applicant requests protection for an invention in one or more member states of the regional organization in question. The regional office accepts these patent applications, which have the same effect as national applications, or grants patents, if all the criteria for the grant of such a regional patent are met.
There is currently, no universal, international system for the grant of patents.

No. Patents are granted by patent offices in exchange for a full disclosure of the invention. In general, the details of the invention are then published and made available to the public at large.
It should be noted that publication can take place at various stages of the procedure. In some countries, the patent document is only published after the granting of a patent. In other countries, patent applications are generally published 18 months from the filing date or, where priority has been claimed, the priority date (for more details, see the website of your national IP office).

If you don’t patent your invention, competitors may well take advantage of it. If the product is successful, many other competitor firms will be tempted to make the same product by using your invention without needing to ask for your permission. Larger enterprises may take advantage of economies of scale to produce the product more cheaply and compete at a more favorable market price. This may considerably reduce your company’s market share for that product. Even small competing enterprises may be able to produce the same product, and often sell it at a lower price as they would not have to recoup the original research and development costs incurred by your company.
But that’s not all. The possibilities to license, sell or transfer technology will be severely hindered if you don’t patent your invention; indeed, without intellectual property (patent) rights, transfers of technology would be difficult if not impossible. The transfer of technology assumes that one or more parties have legal ownership of a technology and this can only be effectively obtained through appropriate intellectual property (IP) protection. Without IP protection for the technology in question, all sides tend to be suspicious of disclosing their inventions during technology transfer talks, fearing that the other side may “run away with the invention”.
Finally, you have to consider the possibility that someone else may patent your invention first. The first person or enterprise to file a patent for an invention will have the right to the patent. This may in fact mean that, if you do not patent your inventions or inventions made the employees of your company, somebody else – who may have developed the same or an equivalent invention later – may do so. Thus they could legitimately exclude your enterprise from the market, limit your activities to the continuation of prior use (where the patent legislation provides for such an exception), or ask your company to pay a licensing fee for using the invention.
However, to ensure that no one is able to patent your invention, instead of filing a patent application, you may disclose the invention to the public so that it becomes prior art for any patent application that will be filed after your publication, thereby placing it in the public domain (commonly known as defensive publication). Because of the existence of such prior art, later filed patent applications containing the same or similar invention will be refused by a patent office on the grounds of the lack of novelty or inventive step. At the same time, if you disclose your invention before filing a patent application, you will severely limit your possibility of obtaining patent protection on that invention.

In most countries, if an employee has developed an invention in execution of his/her employment contract – i.e. usually during his/her working time within the enterprise – the invention (and the related patent rights) will belong to the enterprise. To avoid confusion and possible disputes, employers often specify issues of intellectual property ownership in employment contracts. Depending on the merits of the case, the employee may, however, have a right to equitable remuneration in accordance with legislative provisions or the employment contract. In any case, the employee will always retain the right to be mentioned as the inventor, unless he/she expressly renounces this right.

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